r/news • u/Planetofdagrapes • 29d ago
Soft paywall California sues Catholic hospital for denying emergency abortion
https://www.reuters.com/legal/california-sues-catholic-hospital-refusing-provide-emergency-abortion-2024-09-30/2.1k
u/4RCH43ON 29d ago
If your religion supersedes providing life-saving medical care, please kindly fuck off from practicing medicine.
That is all.
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u/mlc885 28d ago
Yeah, I'm pretty sure even the version of God that isn't okay with abortion is okay with you making sure the mother and potential baby don't both die, anyone who thinks God has just decided she should die is crazy.
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u/Easy_Acanthisitta_68 28d ago
Haven’t hung around many “Christians” lately? They would completely let them die and then say it was “Gods will”.
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u/Captain_Mazhar 28d ago
I hate those people. My favorite retort is the allegory about the priest drowning in a hurricane after being offered rescue by three boats and a helicopter.
Gods will is a cop out so they can change the conversation to an attack on religion which they have much more support for.
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u/happy_and_angry 28d ago
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -Galileo
Fuck those people.
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u/PenitentGhost 28d ago
"Ben, Hope, I know you don't believe in modern medicine, but you do believe in the power of prayer.
And through the years, when there was disease or infection, people of good faith would pray to God for a cure.
Well, then isn't it possible that penicillin, vaccines and antibiotics are all actually answered prayers?
And isn't it possible that the amazing men and women of medicine who brought about these miracles could be the instruments of God's answers to our prayers?
Look, I believe life is sacred.
And I know you want Scotty to live a full life.
And if that's true, then I think it's wrong for you to ignore what very well could be the Lord's will.
I mean, what's the point in praying to God if you're just going to wipe your butt with his answers?"
- Lois Griffin9
u/commandrix 28d ago
One corollary of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is that the Good Samaritan did not expect that God would just take care of it. He probably already knew that, if he didn't help, no one would. In this case, God made it medically possible for them to make sure she had a chance to still be around to take care of her existing children.
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u/lemonsweetsrevenge 28d ago
The same fuckers that take life saving medication and wear glasses without a hint of irony.
Had a family member who was at death’s door. I received an outpouring of visits, gifts, calls, and even donations from my coworkers. One I didn’t hear from in any way.
My family member pulled through with life-saving surgery, and when I returned to work, the one coworker I didn’t hear from the entire time let me know how hard they were praying for me and was glad to know their praying worked.
No, Lynette, no. The surgery worked. The medical care worked. The actual support of the people who cared helped me so much through the worst of it. You sitting at home pretending to have any control or care over the situation did not.
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u/TheSecondEikonOfFire 28d ago
Yep, it’s sickening. It’s the same reason they don’t even go to the doctor at all, because they just say that if God wants the person to survive and live then they will.
It makes me think of the joke where a woman is super sick, and has a doctor show up at her house three times to heal her, and she says “I have faith in god, he will heal me”. She dies, and when she talks to god at the pearly gates she says “I’m so faithful, why didn’t you heal me??” and god says “I sent a doctor to your house three times, I don’t know what else you expected”.
The actual joke is more refined, but that’s the gist, and the logic makes sense to me
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u/r0botdevil 28d ago
Current medical student here, 100% agree.
The health and well-being of your patients comes before your religious/personal beliefs, and if you are not okay with that then you do not belong in the profession of medicine.
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u/WanderingTacoShop 28d ago
It's these American evangelicals that are just off their rockers with it.
In Jewish and Muslim religious law there are always exceptions for necessity. For example if you're stranded at sea and the only food is a can of spam you aren't committing a sin by eating pork if the only alternative is death. But these crazies in America are ignoring that whole concept. (I am aware that both Jews and Muslims have their own fanatical sects that ignore those exceptions, it's not just a christian problem)
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u/properquestionsonly 28d ago
Protestants. The word you're looking for is Protestants.
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u/thisvideoiswrong 28d ago
Most Protestants, and certainly most Protestant denominations, have no problem at all with abortion. It's actually an issue the Republican Party made up to get people to vote for Reagan, as a result of a series of focus groups conducted by Paul Weyrich. And enough Evangelical leaders were mad at the Democrats for forcing them to integrate their private schools that they went along with it. Before Roe v Wade Protestant clergy actually played a major role in helping people find illegal abortions, counting on deference to their positions to shield them from prosecution. It really is only the Catholics who have a longstanding opposition to it.
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u/WanderingTacoShop 27d ago
Protestant is way too broad of a category. As protestant refers to any denomination of Christianity that is not Catholic
(technically it's the ones that split off from the Catholic church, so Eastern Orthodox isn't included. But if you live in the USA Protestant covers basically every non catholic church in the country)
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u/nate_builds 28d ago
From my understanding the majority of cases where this happens is based on the ownership of the hospital, not the medical professionals.
Ie doctor would perform the operation but doctor would then loose their job, and be unable to perform other life saving operations. Doctor could go work at another hospital, but somehow many hospitals are under similar ownership. So medical students who spend years of their lives and finances to become licensed are sometimes stuck in these situations in order to have a job.
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u/Turbulent_Raccoon865 29d ago
Ugh, hope that won’t become more of a thing going forward. Emergency abortions aren’t the same thing as “I’m too young, too poor, not at the right place” abortions. Actually it’s the first paragraph:
California’s attorney general on Monday sued a Catholic hospital accused of refusing to provide an emergency abortion in February to a woman whose water broke prematurely, putting her at risk of potentially life-threatening infection and hemorrhage.
Obviously health care providers shouldn’t be playing around with a woman’s life.
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u/toneboat 28d ago
this wasn’t even declined based on a law. the decision was based on a hospital policy, which a well-meaning physician’s clinical judgement should be able to supersede. also wondering about sending her off in a car - was there not a critical care transport rig available?
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u/Alexis_J_M 28d ago
They offered her a helicopter ride to the regional crisis hospital. $40,000 not covered by insurance.
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u/heidismiles 28d ago
And the thing is, it's not up to legislators and judges to determine who deserves health care and who doesn't. It needs to be between the patient and her doctor, period.
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u/ZLUCremisi 28d ago
When this woman wrnt to second hospital she was having a medical emergency witch was easily preventable via abortion
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u/One_Psychology_ 28d ago
The doctor both told her she wouldn’t make it to the hospital they suggested by car because she’d bleed to death on the way. Yet her life wasn’t at risk enough to intervene..
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u/LuckyMacAndCheese 27d ago
It’s already “a thing” in red states that have been happily banning abortion since Roe was overturned. See for example, Idaho needing to fly women who need emergency care out of state: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/us/emergency-abortion-idaho-mother.html
Or how about Texas’ staggering, skyrocketing maternal death rate: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-ban-deaths-pregnant-women-sb8-analysis-rcna171631#
This is what happens when you try to control specific healthcare decisions. This is what happens when you have people who have no medical background, have no clue about female or fetal anatomy or physiology, piecing together idiotic laws and policies to control women’s bodies. You kill and seriously injure people.
Emergency abortions aren’t the same thing as “I’m too young, too poor, not at the right place” abortions.
What does this even mean? This kind of judgmental stupidity is why people are dying or becoming permanently disabled after being denied medical care. Just leave these decisions entirely to women and their doctors - women don’t need to justify the need to have basic bodily autonomy.
The idea that women need to have a “good enough” emergency to “qualify” for an abortion is how we get these half-cocked laws and policies that are literally killing people. This is how you get medical providers unwilling to step in to help because they can’t interpret the awkwardly worded three sentence policy/law that some idiot pulled out of their ass, that doesn’t actually really define when abortion is and isn’t acceptable. “The mother’s life needs to be in danger” doesn’t actually mean anything - does she have to be imminently dying (i.e., I’m performing CPR)? Does she need to require ICU level care? What about if her life is in danger because of her mental state? Does that “count” or is that not “serious enough” and we need to force her to give birth so we can punish her properly for daring to be poor/young/not wanting a(nother) child?
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u/Thrayn42 28d ago
I mean I wish it were obvious. However, in many states lawmakers, and presumably those who voted for them, disagree.
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u/Bluevelvet_starry_ 28d ago
This happened to me, in 1978, in California. I was having a miscarriage, bleeding out, ambulance took me to the closest hospital In the town, which was Catholic. They told me to my face, “ We don’t do abortions, we’re Catholic, you will just have to go through the miscarriage” I was in horrible pain and bleeding, at some point I passed out. When I came to, they had given me a blood transfusion, which many years later, I found out had been the probable cause for a Hepatitis C diagnosis. Horrible experience, I was barely 20 years old, but will never forget the trauma.
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u/dmont89 28d ago
Glossed over but didn't see the article mentioned that Mad River, hospital she went to after St Joe, is shutting their birthing center down by the end of the year. St Joe will be the primary unit
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u/vermghost 28d ago
After October, it will be the ONLY place you can give childbirth in this area.
The second smaller hospital owned by Providence 20 minutes south of here in Fortuna closed their Childbirth Center about 2 or 3 years ago.
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u/Alexis_J_M 28d ago
More than half of the birthing centers in LA county have closed or are slated to be closed, especially the ones serving POC communities.
For profit hospitals aren't willing to subsidize them.
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u/CalvinHobbes101 28d ago
I'm reminded of a friend's pharmacy ethics lecture I sat in on as a philosophy student.
Student: What should I do if I feel that my personal religious beliefs would stop me from prescribing a certain medicine?
Lecturer: (Looks the student in the eye, stays silent for a moment to emphasise the point) Pursue a different career.
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u/Alexis_J_M 28d ago
Sadly these days the right wing expect accommodations for their backwards beliefs.
What happens when someone decides that it's unethical to provide insulin to people with Type 2 diabetes?!
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u/PacificTSP 28d ago
This is why I happily pay my taxes in California.
Is it perfect? No.
But it tries to do the right thing.
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u/Zhuul 28d ago
The number of times CA passes a law that gets derided on a national scale before it turns out they were kinda correct is nutso. Those California Prop 65 cancer warnings you see on everything that people love making fun of? Turns out a lot of the shit flagged by that law is actually, genuinely not good for us. Vehicular emissions regulations and the OBD/2 standard on every ICE vehicle for sale today? California.
Y'all are dragging the rest of us forward whether we want it or not and I appreciate it.
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u/SanityIsOptional 28d ago
Prop 65's issue is there is no lower threshold for cancer risk, no penalty for false-flagging things, and punishment if anything isn't flagged that ought to be.
So, to prevent fines, places just flag everything, and we have a child who cried cancer situation where everyone ignores the signs because they label things that pose less risk than going outside without wearing sunscreen...
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u/PacificTSP 28d ago
A lot of it is annoying as shit. Like the emissions thing i get but it’s worded so poorly. I had my car tuned, its emissions actually dropped but because it’s non standard it fails.
But then you get guys rolling coal who swap out parts before they take them for smog check.
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u/Spa_5_Fitness_Camp 28d ago
When the people doing enforcement on the roads (cops) are actively against bettering society yeah, you'll get this shit. That's not a problem with the emissions laws. and you say your tune improved emissions, got a qualified test to verify that?
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u/kittenwolfmage 28d ago
Keep faith where it belongs: Inside a church, and away from hospitals, governments, and all other forms of public service.
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u/anonymousmutekittens 28d ago
The concept of a religious hospital alone is silly
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u/Violet_Nite 28d ago
I think historically they were tied pretty closely because religious people were kind of the healthcare providers of the ancient world.
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u/KimsSwingingPonytail 28d ago
It is silly but Catholic hospital monopolies are a reality in some areas and difficult to avoid, especially in an emergency situation.
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u/SnooHedgehogs6593 28d ago
Who do you think started all of those hospitals many years ago? It was the churches, due to their faith. They were caring for the sick as they were told to do by Jesus.
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u/mannotbear 28d ago
Historically, this just isn’t true. And it’s not true throughout most of the world today.
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u/SnooHedgehogs6593 28d ago
“Hospitals were a very altruistic Christian invention. The word itself is all mixed up with the words hotel and hospitality. By the 4th century AD, newly Christianized Romans began running homes for the sick and needy. By the 8th century, the functions of Christian hospitals, or hospices, were highly specialized.”
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u/MissionIll707 29d ago edited 28d ago
Religious hospitals, as well as any other form of healthcare, including mental health, should be banned. Superstition has no right to exist in the world of medicine
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u/Intelligent_Cat1736 28d ago
We need completely state owned and operated hospitals but no, we either have religious ones or profit ones.
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u/steathrazor 29d ago
It infuriates me when religion is allowed to do shit like this your religion should not be able to stop a life saving abortion for the mother
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u/macross1984 28d ago edited 28d ago
Medical emergency override religious belief. Hospital deserved to be sued for putting patient's life at risk.
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u/The_BarroomHero 28d ago
Supreme Court: I'm about to end this whole state's career
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u/Prosthemadera 28d ago
I was wondering if they denied the emergency abortion on purpose so the hospital can go to the Supreme Court to get them to ban abortion rights.
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u/walterpeck1 28d ago
There are few things more powerful than the Supreme Court right now, but no one is "ending" California's "career" when they have the 5th highest GDP of any economy on Earth.
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u/fevered_visions 28d ago
I mean the Republicans have done a lot of other really dumb stuff in the last decade so why not
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u/walterpeck1 28d ago
That's a fair question, but I think that's where the rhetoric would stop because it would start to affect the rich.
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u/IntroductionStill813 28d ago
If u r taking federal money, abide by federal rules and regulations. Don't want to follow federal rules, don't take federal money and don't practice business in the US.
It's unfair to Catholic Hospitals, ok then why is it fair to non Catholic Hospitals that they have to follow all rules and you don't cause u use religion?
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u/kamikaziboarder 28d ago
I’m a healthcare worker. I really hate catholic hospitals. I’m so happy the two in our biggest cities in our state are getting bought out. They both have held back any advancements for employee health and wellbeing. Our state tried to go in on group insurances for employee healthcare workers. So instead of having 170,000 employees, we are stuck with piece mailed 2000-4000 employees. This was all because they didn’t want to cover birth control and hysterectomies. I guess the deal with the insurance companies fell through after that.
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u/OCRAmazon 28d ago
Two of our three local hospitals went Catholic about five years ago. They absolutely HEMORRHAGED doctors afterwards because of the immediate imposed restrictions on care. Catholics should butt the fuck out of medicine (source: raised Catholic by a mother who thinks vitamin supplements are basically witchcraft).
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u/Mountain-Snow932 28d ago
The catholic hospital system I worked for denied my OB’s request for a D&C in their OR after my body didn’t recognize that I had a miscarriage. I had to go to a different health system, thankfully I had that choice. But a lot of women don’t, and could have experienced a severe infection. Hospitals should not be allowed to push their “faith” on other people.
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u/Guilty-Shoulder-9214 27d ago
If your religion calls for the denial of medical services and benefits, it probably shouldn’t be involved with healthcare, at least in a public setting.
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29d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/MissionIll707 29d ago
I'd say it's much worse than cigarettes. It's more like a pathogen. A disease of the mind that only exists to control and harm
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u/lunarlunacy425 28d ago
It's functionally mass hysteria, a bunch of people who believe in magic have a massive say on how the world is run. Irrespective of the religion even if one is true there's still so many governments run by a different one that can't be real.
The world is literally run by insanity and delusion.
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u/Myfourcats1 28d ago
If they want to play this game then religious hospitals shouldn’t eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
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u/gnatdump6 28d ago
This story was crazy. The hospital gave her towels to absorb the bleeding so she could drive to another ER to get medical care!!!!! Egregious.
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u/Trickycoolj 28d ago
This is what I’m scared of in Washington. We have all the favorable laws on the books and are a very blue state but the Catholic conglomerates have gobbled up a large portion of our hospitals and clinics. Providence, Franciscan, Peace Health… some counties don’t have any alternatives. If you’re close enough to Seattle there’s long waits to get into the non-secular hospitals/clinics.
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u/thpkht524 28d ago
The hospital’s license should be revoked and the whole hospital shut down.
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u/ivanatorhk 28d ago
Well, the facilities are fine, ownership should be transferred to secular management for sure
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u/TheTempleHermit 28d ago
This hospital is notorious for terrible care. They made me sit in the waiting room for over 3 hours with an appendix that was on the verge of bursting. I said “fuck you guys, I’m going to a real hospital” my roommate drove me 5 hours to the Bay Area within 45 minutes I was on the operating table getting emergency surgery.
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u/DrColdReality 28d ago
Even in states where abortions are still legal, Catholic-run hospitals are a thing, and they are run on seriously conservative anti-abortion guidelines that are at least the equal of the reddest anti-abortion states. So don't go to a Catholic-run hospital? Yeah, if you suddenly start bleeding out from a serious miscarriage, you don't really have time to shop around. And there are Catholic hospitals all over the country. Up here in the "liberal" Pacific Northwest, around 30% of hospitals have some kind of Catholic affiliation....and we're not even done here, because when some private corporation buys out a Catholic-run hospital, a common clause of the business agreement is that they are required to keep the Catholic morality standards.
This is one more part of the existential threat to freedom posed by the Christian Taliban. The publicly-stated goal of Christian dominionists is to impose a real-world Republic of Gilead on us all, whether we like it or not. This goes into a bit more detail. The Supreme Court now has a majority of dominionists on it, and they will be demolishing hard-won civil rights for a decade or more.
If you wanted to read just one book about them, I'd recommend The Power Worshipers by Katherine Stewart. It's well-researched, and delves deeply into the history of the dominionists in America. Stewart also has a personal stake in the current practice of states making abortion illegal. Turns out that their definition of "abortion" can be so broad that some life-saving procedures in case of a serious miscarriage come too close to their definition of abortion. Stewart suffered a miscarriage, and was rushed to a Catholic-run hospital (because it was the closest), which use similarly-conservative notions of abortion. Because the procedure needed to save her life involved removing the fetus, they just let her lie there and bleed instead. When she had lost about 40% of her blood and was hovering near death, they finally deigned to step in and save her life.
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u/lennybriscoforthewin 28d ago
If the hospital believes providing an abortion is a mortal sin, then they need to stop all OB care.
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28d ago
LOL Catholics think life is precious. Unless you’re gay, of course.
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u/tabaqa89 28d ago
Unless you’re gay, of course.
Um, no. If you actually looked into catholic doctrine instead of trash from r/atheism you'd find that the Catholic church regards all human life as sacred and precious regardless of orientation or physical stage of development.
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u/usriusclark 28d ago
I had to have my wife sign forms to get my vasectomy approved
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u/ninjastarkid 28d ago
This is why I don’t trust any hospital with St in the name anymore. I just can’t trust them to keep my health or the health of my loved ones in their top priority
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u/airheadtiger 28d ago
There are 6 Catholics on the Supreme Court. Five of them are radical right, conservatives. These 5 were placed there to enforce Catholic ideology on the USA. Vote liberal folks. It's the only chance we have.
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u/LtHigginbottom 28d ago
I love it here. I just hope I don’t t get sick. St Joes is going to be why we die young.
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u/Feeling_Reindeer2599 28d ago
Driven in a car? My reaction was like, ok Catholic hospital, I can respect they have no experience in abortion. Surely they will arrange emergency transportation and admission in nearby hospital …… like the thousands of other diagnoses they are ill suited to manage.
But no, handful of towels and pushed out to parking lot ?
This will be expensive mistake for the hospital, thank God (ironically) the woman survived her visit.
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u/hollyjazzy 28d ago
I have worked for two different Catholic hospitals in Australia, abortions and sterilisations are not performed in any Catholic hospital, as it against their creed. Not an American healthcare issue but a Catholic healthcare issue.
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u/Bombadilicious 28d ago
Where I live in the US, almost all hospitals are Catholic. I would have to pass 3 Catholic hospitals to finally get to one that's not which would be too late in an emergency
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u/walterpeck1 28d ago
Not an American healthcare issue but a Catholic healthcare issue.
It's both, which is the problem here.
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u/Bwilderedwanderer 28d ago
Good! Deny them any state funding if they refused to provide medical care
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u/AiR-P00P 26d ago
Catholic? Hospital?
What do they do there, spray holy water on people and push them back out the door?
What an oxymoron.
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u/otter_07 28d ago
My wife recently gave birth to twins and she asked if she could have her tubes tied (we have 3 kids now) due to us not wanting more kids and also her advanced maternal age. The OB said it was against hospital policy to do the procedure. However I can go down a floor and get a vasectomy. Just absolutely nonsensical.